Food For Thought: #CancelColbert Meets “The Culture of Shut Up”

While I was planning on writing an article about CSI and other forensic crime dramas this month, something else caught my attention that I find to be a more pressing issue at the moment. By now, you’re all familiar with Suey Park, the 23-year old activist who launched the somewhat baffling #CancelColbert campaign, which was created in reaction to a joke Stephen Colbert made about Redskins owner Dan Snyder. Colbert ran a segment on The Colbert Report that made fun of Snyder’s choice to create the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation after receiving backlash for refusing to change the name of his football team:

After the segment ran, Comedy Central posted a tweet with Colbert’s joke, albeit without the context that would have indicated it was lampooning Snyder and the Redskins:

That is where #CancelColbert comes into play; while Colbert’s joke made sense when it was performed on The Colbert Report, it is understandable how people might get offended by Comedy Central’s tweet if they didn’t understand the original context of the joke. Needless to say, #CancelColbert caught on like wildfire, and its creator became a media sensation; Suey Park’s story was picked up by Time Magazinenumerous times, and major news networks discussed the momentum behind #CancelColbert. However, despite the fact that Suey Park’s hashtag could have encouraged intelligent discussion about race relations and the problems with white privilege, the whole thing degenerated into something nasty and unpleasant; while Suey Park makes some legitimate points, she goes about addressing these issues in all the wrong ways.

The original #CancelColbert tweets

The first typical indication that the #CancelColbert movement turned into a fiasco is that there was an onslaught of people who tried to silence Suey Park with abusive messages such as this:

Even without the deleted racial slur, this is pretty bad.

We have all seen these types of backlashes before; the Internet is infamous for people using threats to silence individuals they dislike. Of course, this isn’t the only reason why #CancelColbert ended up being a disaster; where she could have taken the high road and tried to press her cause despite the backlash, Park instead acted just like her detractors. Throughout her campaign, what could have been a good opportunity to discuss the problem of white privilege or racial humor instead flared up into many off-putting moments where Park tried to shut down opinions she disagreed with, or flat-out dismissed people’s arguments because of their race. To provide an example, there was that one time she said gay people don’t deserve protection if they’re white:

Because being gay has never been looked down upon or criminaliz- oh wait.

The #CancelColbert controversy spun out of control, and any meaningful opportunity to stay true to the original intent of the tweet was lost. Near the center of the maelstrom of awkwardness was an interview that was conducted between Ms. Park and Huffington Post. If this interview serves any purpose, it acts as the perfect illustration for what happens when Suey Park and her dissenters butt heads:

By the end of that interview, both sides of the debate belittle each other, take their toys, and go home. What results is a pointless fight where nothing meaningful is achieved. For those at work who can’t watch the above interview, Joshua Zepp of HuffPo immediately got defensive, and tried to shut Suey Park down by calling her ideas stupid. On the other side of the coin, Park acted just as defensively as Zepp when she tried to shut him down by saying that, as a white man, he couldn’t possibly understand her cause; she doesn’t have to “enact the labor” to explain anything to him.1

Unfortunately, the firestorm surrounding Suey Park is just one of numerous instances where people on the Internet irrationally try to purge dissenters instead of engaging in rational debates. I found an article recently on the Atlantic called “The Culture of Shut Up” where the author Jon Lovett (not to be confused with the actor Jon Lovitz) made the alarming claim that people of this day and age would much rather try to censor each other instead of understanding and accepting that everybody shares diverse points of view. So far, it may be simple to see how we can apply this reasoning to what happened with #CancelColbert. However, Lovett went further in writing that the Internet’s rise in intolerance has a chilling effect on free speech, where people are afraid to freely speak their minds and go outside their comfort zone to learn new things – instead, we would much rather live in a bubble where we can surround ourselves with only other people who share the exact same world-views.

[N]o matter how noble the intent, it’s a demand for conformity that encourages people on all sides of a debate to police each other instead of argue and convince each other. And, ultimately, the cycle of attack and apology, of disagreement and boycott, will leave us with fewer and fewer people talking more and more about less and less.

– John Lovett, The Culture of Shut Up

To briefly touch on Lovett’s discussion of the First Amendment, this Constitutional value as a concept speaks to the ideal of being able to express almost any idea we desire, allowing us to nurture intelligent discussion about difficult subjects and growing as a society. Of course, that is not to say that we can say anything we please without consequences; for example, the NBA took action against Donald Sterling after his racist tirade by banning him from the league for life, and fining him $2.5 M.2 We need to understand that this freedom is not absolute, and we are going to be held accountable for what we say. With that said, there is a huge difference between being held accountable for saying terrible things, and being censored if somebody even mildly disagrees with you. If people are okay with censoring each other, then what happens is that we are less willing to discuss hard or sensitive issues out of fear of being attacked or silenced.

So what is causing this problem? Why are people so willing to shut themselves into a safety bubble where they are only surrounded by people they agree with, and why do they feel compelled to silence dissenters who express ideas they don’t like? Nobody knows for sure, but one possible explanation could be the growing trend in people learning to think less critically. One article I read recently, entitled “Dear Class of 2014: Thanks for Not Disinviting Me,” provided a harsh critique against students for their lack of tolerance when it comes to ideas that they disagree with. The author, Stephen L. Carter, discussed the growing trend in students and faculty members “disinviting” speakers from graduation ceremonies, mainly because these speakers were conservatives or belonged to organizations that the students hated. For example, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was “disinvited” from speaking at Rutgers University because of her position in the Bush Administration; the protestors cited the war in Iraq, and the acts of torture committed by the CIA, as the primary reasons for their refusal to let her speak.

Frankly it seems this is sort of an inevitable movement toward people increasingly expecting physical comfort and intellectual comfort in their lives . . . It is only going to get harder to teach people that there is a real important and serious value to being offended. Part of that is talking about deadly serious and uncomfortable subjects.

In a respect, this issue might shed some light on Suey Park’s approach to addressing racial issues, as she is unwilling to critically think about the holes in her argument. Instead, she attempts to shut out dissenting opinions because they make her uncomfortable and angry. The problem with this is that we need to be exposed to ideas we find unpleasant, as that is what motivates us to learn and grow as people. If we can accept that unpleasant or unpopular opinions exist, then we can broaden our worldview and start a dialogue with the opposing side in hopes of achieving something resembling progress. If we take on Suey Park’s approach and shut out everything that might make us squirm, then we achieve nothing.

A role model in how not to think.

At the end of the day, #CancelColbert and the woman behind it represents a bizarre and worrisome trend in our culture. Whether we can do something to address this issue is yet to be seen, but what the main takeaway from this discussion can be summarized as such: even if there are people whose opinions make your blood boil because they oppose your fundamental beliefs, that doesn’t mean that their opinions should be shut down and silenced. Certainly, as I mentioned before, free speech comes with an understanding that we can be held accountable for what we say. With that said, everybody has an opinion on something, and they are not all going to be the same. Suey Park reacted to other people’s opinions by trying to silence them entirely, and the #CancelColbert campaign resulted in a firestorm where nothing got accomplished (except make Park a celebrity overnight). If we can accept that diverse beliefs exist (no matter how repugnant), and if we live up to the expectations set by the First Amendment, then we can take steps forward as a society to grow if we can start dialogues and begin to expand our worldviews. Only then can we escape from damaging cultural trends like those encountered in #CancelColbert.

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1: This article is not attempting to tone-police Suey Park or anyone else; instead, what this article is trying to promote is a healthier discussion on racial issues instead of acting in a way that discourages people from freely discussing tough issues out of fear of being silenced and attacked.

2: This does not violate Sterling’s First Amendment rights because the NBA is a private corporation; the 1st Amendment only prevents the government from suppressing people’s rights to free speech.

Born in the stomach of a whale in a small fishing town in Antarctica, Kenny knew that his life mission would be to end world hunger, save Tibet, and finally learn how to dougie. Instead, he ended up studying law and writing the "Food For Thought" article series for CheshireCatStudios.com. One day, he hopes to become President of Brazil and blow up the moon.

I think critical thinking is an important part of human behaviour and needs to be reinforced in education, doing a science course at university it’s one of the first things they teach you. However I do not believe that it why Suey Park’s movement failed. I believe it failed because to be a Social Justice Warrior implies you must be fighting something, people tend to struggle with the idea of fighting a concept so they instead attack a person, or people. This is what Suey did, instead of discussing racism on an even playing field she took the perceived moral high ground and attacks “White Liberals”. She talked about herself as the one in the absolute right, and therefore anyone arguing with her was bad, this particularly annoyed me when she said “I will not enact the labour”, like explaining herself to “the enemy” is such a chore. This is fighting with yourself as the irony is you are fighting racism with racism, hate with more hate. It’s a similar technique used by some feminist, which is why I’m put off that tittle. It’s the fundamental flaw with Social Justice Warriors, I agree with feminists and racial activists but would not identity with either group due to the “Us vs them” mentality.

I really enjoyed this article. It’s very well thought out, but I do find one flaw in it. As much as I would like a smart and fair conversation on topics such as race and racial humor, I find that the #CancelColbert campaign was never going to be and never could be that conversation form it’s inception. The initial problem was that the inciting incident didn’t have a racist intent, it was merely a problem with context. The offender is nothing but a supporter of civil rights, just look at all his LGBT segments. The punishment they are calling for is too serve; one racial joke is not the grounds to cancel a high rated comedy show that is otherwise a decent source of US political news for those who have no interest in getting it from other channels or forms of media. Just asking for an apology would be the appropriate action for a first time offender.

To have a real talk about that would change the status quo, you’ll need to start in a grey area. If you start it too far off in a white or black area, no conversation is need on a prima facie case. The #CancelColbert campaign was targeted at the wrong person for a simple misunderstanding and asked for a far too serve a punishment for a minor offense. I just hope people use this as a cautionary tale.

Also, for as much as I have read up on this, I’m surprise that I am just now learning about that less than civil remark about “white gays”. Thanks for writing a great article. I look forward to the next one.

Cheshire Cat Studios is the home of what we hope is a mix of artistic integrity and dry humor. We share a passion for movies, games and other mediums but are looking to spread our reach into more original content in the future: investigative videos, satirical comedies, and animated podcasts. We like to think that we approach topics with a down to earth, analytical viewpoint and don’t play favorites.